Light at the tunnel's end

It's breathtaking how fast the unemployment rate has increased in San Joaquin County. Likely, the worst is yet to come.

The Record

It's breathtaking how fast the unemployment rate has increased in San Joaquin County. Likely, the worst is yet to come.

The county's February jobless rate was 15.8 percent, according to figures released earlier this month by the state Employment Development Department.

That's the highest rate the county has seen for 15 years, and it's half again as high as it was in February 2008, when the EDD estimated it at 10 percent.

Two gloomy economic forecasts out last week - one from the Business Forecasting Center at University of the Pacific, and the Anderson Forecast from University of California, Los Angeles - put a damper on hopes that this recession has run its course or that there's light at the end of the tunnel or that we've come through the worst.

Both forecasts said the state's unemployment rate could climb to 12 percent, the highest level in 27 years. As economic forecasts go, that's not exactly venturing too far out on a limb, given that 12 percent is only a point and a half higher than the 10.5 percent it reached in February.

There are nearly 2 million Californians out of work, a number nearly three times the population of San Joaquin County.

And in San Joaquin County, an estimated 48,400 people are jobless, a number only slightly less than the population of Lodi.

Those are the rawest of the raw numbers the EDD puts out. For millions of Californians, what we're going through is much more than a recession. Losing your job can be devastating; not being able to find another only compounds the assault.

Across California, not one non-farm segment of the job market grew in the 12 months ending in February, a brutal indicator of the depth and breadth of this recession.

Hardest hit: construction, reflecting the real estate market, with the number of jobs down more than 18 percent from February 2008.

Suffering least: government, which lost only 0.3 percent of its jobs in the same period, followed by educational and health services, down 1.8 percent.

The pattern was slightly different in San Joaquin County, where government employment year-over dropped by about 700 jobs, and educational and health services increased by 100 jobs.

The Obama administration says its biggest goal in pushing the $787billion economic stimulus package was to create as many jobs as possible as quickly as possible.

Billions of those dollars will flow into California; millions will come to San Joaquin County. Some of that money will go to extend unemployment benefits 20 weeks, to a total of 79 weeks.

If jobs are created, if people start to gain confidence, if they start to spend and if that spending ripples out through the community, perhaps things will start to turn around. But for anyone sitting at the kitchen table endlessly scanning the help wanted ads, that's a lot of ifs.